How should tool apps operate?

Two days ago, a reader gave me a trial of their tool-type App, and coincidentally, last week a reader also wanted me to talk about the operation of tool-type products.

So let’s have a brief discussion today.

1. The entry point must be accurate

Operation initialization

First of all, it should be clear that no matter what product, the entry point will be discussed before starting operations.

The reason why the entry point is critical is that it is related to the following factors:

User attributes: Who are the target users of the tool?

User needs: What are the needs of these users?

User reach: Where can you find these users?

User fit: Is the user likely to use my product?

User acquisition: How do I get them to actually use my product?

User activity: How do I get them to use my product at the expected frequency?

User payment: How can I make them willing to pay for my product?

What's on top?

It’s user operation work.

Mayu and Daiyi Ma focus on women's health, and their entry point is menstrual health management. Can it be extended in the future?

For example, from menstruation to pregnancy to postpartum to parenting to parent-child relationship?

But no matter how it extends, where is the starting point?

That's the entry point

The core technology of CamScanner and CamCard is text OCR. CamScanner is for customers with scanning needs, and CamCard is for business customers. CamScanner helps customers save paper materials, invoices, PPT lecture content and other text information;

CamCardKing helps customers save the information of exchanged business cards.

Can they extend in the future?

For example, CamScanner has entered the fields of education, teaching materials, corporate archive management, and ancient book archiving; CamBiz has entered the field of business and social networking (although I think this approach is debatable).

So, where do these extensions start?

Therefore, the starting point of tool-type product operation is to find the right entry point.

If the entry point is not found correctly, subsequent operational work cannot be carried out.

2. User perception should be clear

Targeted process operations

What are tool-type products afraid of?

You are afraid that users will not have a clear perception of what you do or what you can provide.

Moji Weather initially focused on providing weather information, but later added many other things, including community and picture sharing.

I don’t know how Moji Weather did with picture sharing and community later on, but we can ask ourselves, what would have happened if Moji Weather had done this from the beginning?

I think that before users have a clear understanding and sufficient trust in the product, any action that affects user perception will lead to problems.

To this day, users believe that Dianping can help them make dining and entertainment decisions. This is the core perception of users. Even if users are cheated after screening restaurants through Dianping, users still believe that this may not be Dianping's fault, but rather that their tastes are different from those of others.

This is because Dianping has always insisted on focusing on its core function - user reviews of merchants since its early days, from early open comments to current standardized content filling. Because it is standardized, it appears professional - even if it has promotional links, sells advertisements to merchants, and does not do a good job in combating spam and water army, it still appears professional.

Kuaidi Didi was created to meet people’s demand for cars, hoping to efficiently match taxis and passengers. Later, it turned to matching private car owners and passengers, and even carpooling among passengers.

But no matter what, when it comes to Kuaidi, you will think of using cars, that’s for sure.

Some examples are given in Positioning:

Coca-Cola was the first company to be known for cola drinks, Kodak was the first to be known for cheap film, and Xerox was the first to be known for ordinary copy machines.

Take the word "Coke" as an example. Due to the success of Coca-Cola, the alias "Coke" has acquired what is called a secondary meaning in semantics.

Would you name a soft drink after a word meaning "the food left after coal is burned in the absence of air" or a common name for the hallucinogenic cocaine?

Because the secondary meaning of "cola" is so strong, Coca-Cola Company doesn't have to worry about its negative connotations at all.

Although what we are talking about here is "brand association" in traditional marketing, in fact, keeping users' perception clear is also the most important operational action for tool-type products.

Yesterday I told reader Hou Wanchuan about her product trial experience she provided, and this was what I discussed with her.

The product they make is a truck reservation service for C and B. The product logic and operation are very simple and clear, but there is an argument: whether the name of a button should be called "Payment".

My suggestion is to call it “Booking” instead of “Payment”, and after the user clicks, inform them of the subsequent process in a more interesting way, for example, pay first and then use the car.

The reason is simple:

It is a new product, and users have no trust in it, or even no knowledge of it, so the possibility of them making a payment directly is almost zero.

At this time, what the operator needs to do is to guide users to have a clear understanding of themselves and gradually gain trust, so that they may be willing to try to make payments.

3. Don’t waste money

Avoid bringing in useless users

Anyone who has used financial management products should have seen the so-called virtual principal, and may have also experienced the withdrawable virtual principal income.

But after the withdrawal, will you become a user of this financial management tool product?

I won't.

Because I don’t have this need myself - if you still remember, I once said in the article about Alipay 9.0 that married men should hand over their wages.

However, I will give it a try, because I can keep the interest you give me for free as my own money, even if it's only 10 or 8 yuan, a little bit is still money, right?

Especially for some price-conscious customers, this bargain is simply worth taking advantage of.

You will find that your customer acquisition cost is very high because many of the users you spend money to bring in will not actually use you.

They are only motivated by profit to receive the award.

It is not just a tool-type product. How many zombie fans and lucky draw professionals have been created by Weibo forwarding activities?

Benefits are a double-edged sword. Before giving them out, think about how to maximize the benefits for your users. Otherwise, don’t give them out because they are worthless.

Gudong.com, where my good friend Li Yang used to work, was originally a smart hardware company, but later it raised funds and said it wanted to create a sports social circle.

I once joked on Zhihu that it is quite difficult to arrange a run, but it might be easier to have sex.

Sports social networking is a field that many smart hardware companies hope to enter. It can be done, but how to do it is still difficult.

At this time, if you want to spend money to solve the problem, I can only say, rich man, let’s be friends!

4. Let users spread the word spontaneously

The Ultimate Tool Product Operation

Many people use Evernote.

Evernote has a Referral mechanism that allows many users to promote Evernote spontaneously.

Similar examples include Uber and AirBnb.

User Referral is something that many Chinese companies do, and they did it very early. It first appeared in the field of online games and was called "promoter".

Of course, whether it is User Referral or promoter, the core is profit-driven, but we will find that in the long run, the effect of promoters will decline, but User Referral will form a transmission chain.

Mr. Wang next door used product A and thought it was pretty good. He saw that he could get points/premium accounts by sharing and inviting friends, so he shared it with Xiao Ming. Xiao Ming thought it was pretty good, so he shared it with Mr. Li. Mr. Li thought it was awesome, so he shared it with Xiao Zhang...

This spontaneous dissemination based on the high quality of the product itself is of enormous value.

Therefore, I think that when your product is really good, User Referral can help operations quickly acquire more users.

Of course, the premise is that the product is really good.